“Head of a peasant woman with a white headdress”, a rare Van Gogh sold for several million euros in the Netherlands

One of Vincent van Gogh's first paintings was sold for several million euros at a prestigious art fair in the Netherlands, its former owner and Dutch media said on Sunday. The painting Head of a Peasant Girl with a White Headdress was offered for 4.5 million euros at TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair), a veritable treasure trove located in Maastricht, in the south of the country.

“It was sold to a museum outside the European Union,” said Bill Rau, president of the M.S. Rau Gallery, one of the largest and best-known galleries in the United States, based in New York. Orléans, who had put the painting up for sale. “We cannot talk about the price,” Mr. Rau clarified in an email to AFP.

According to the Dutch national news agency ANP, the purchase price “was equal to the initial sale price”. The painting “will be accessible to the public,” says the ANP, which does not give the name of the museum.

Van Gogh created this painting while living with his parents in the town of Nuenen in the south of the Netherlands. In 1885, he painted his famous painting The Potato Eaters in the same place.

Visitors to TEFAF will be able to marvel at paintings, sculptures and jewelry until Thursday. Manet, Rubens and Rodin are among the many pieces on display, all of which will be up for sale, but the undisputed stars of the fair are Van Gogh's Head of a Peasant Girl with a White Headdress and Kandinsky's Murnau mit Kirche II.

Painted in 1910, Kandinsky's masterpiece was sold last year by Sotheby's in London for the record sum of $45 million. Art dealer Robert Landau who bought the painting did not wish to disclose the sale price but told AFP that the work had recently been valued at “100 million euros”. “The world knows what we paid for and we will only sell it to someone we like and who will keep it in a nice place,” Robert Landau said before the official opening of the fair.